House Playlist Beach House, Burial + Four Tet, & Lemonade

House Playlist is a weekly round-up of all the new music we think you need to hear.

Beach House, “Myth.” Beach House seems to have known from the beginning what they wanted their music to sound like, and their past three albums are devoid of major stylistic departures. So why does this band keep surprising me? “Myth,” like Teen Dream’s best tracks, is only startling for how good the band has gotten (again), for how much more emotional nuance and audiophile drama Beach House can wring from the foundational interplay of Alex Scally’s luminous guitar patterns and Victoria Legrand’s glass shard of a voice. Sounding warmer and less austere than anything from Teen Dream, “Myth” is also a bit weightier, gentle enough that you can let it wash over you harmlessly, but still deep enough to drown in if you had a mind to. Matthew Cole

Burial + Four Tet, “Nova.” Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden has always had the rare skill of scrambling an archive of random sounds—folk guitar phrases, rubber-duck noises, chopped-and-screwed vocals—into something light, joyful, and occasionally ecstatic. That lightness is at work in “Nova,” his latest collaboration with Burial, an artist whose musical palette tends to draw from the darker canon of U.K. garage and grime. Sigur Rós-style vocals settle into a melody before a nimble 2-step shuffle and keyboard pattern drops in a minute later, propelling the song into that simple, feel-good territory of early-’90s house. The feeling is as great as it is short-lived though, and the music soon fades into static washes and radio signals. Manan Desai

Lemonade, “Neptune.” After listening to “Neptune,” the stunning lead single from Lemonade’s forthcoming Diver, I revisited both the band’s 2008 self-titled debut and 2010’s Pure Moods EP only to discover how fresh, lively, and inventive those works still sound. “Neptune,” though, is in an entirely different league of tasteful, genre-spanning electro-pop synergy, and it just may be the group’s finest standalone offering to date. Frontman Callan Clendian, whose vocals are a good deal more mature and unwavering than on prior material, absolutely owns the track. Crooning earnestly about the fallout from a casual soiree turned quite contestable, Clendian evokes new wave bands like ABC, Duran Duran, and Naked Eyes while surrounding himself with unmistakable contemporary sounds, from the slow-moving island beat to an unobtrusive modicum of faint, echoing synths. Mike LeChevallier

House Playlist is a series dedicated to highlighting our favorite new singles, leaked songs, and album tracks.

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